Condensed Matter > Soft Condensed Matter

Title:
BPS Configurations in Smectics

Abstract: It is typical in smectic liquid crystals to describe elastic deformations
with a linear theory when the elastic strain is small. We extend the recent,
exact solution of Brener and Marchenko to more general one-dimensional
deformations, including multiple edge dislocations by relying on the
Bogomol'nyi, Prasad and Sommerfield (BPS) decomposition. We introduce an
approximation for the deformation profile far from a spherical inclusion and
find an enhanced attractive interaction at long distances due to the nonlinear
elasticity.